


Harm

by aderyn



Series: Two Hills [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dr. John, Hippocratic Oath, Sherlock past present & future, mantic Molly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:16:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know why you wanted to be a doctor,” Molly says to John.</p>
<p>Sherlock flings the door open and bursts from the undergrowth (an entire flock of strangely subterranean crows) calling, “Molly! A bone chisel!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Harm

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much, [ScienceofObsession](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession), for thoughts and inspiration.

 

“I know why you wanted to be a doctor,” Molly says to John.  The lab gleams around them, an elemental cave of borosilicate glass and mercury-vapor light.

“Yeah?” he says. They’re friends now, in a way, since they both speak regularly with dead and love the same man.

“Yeah,” she says, “and it isn’t for the usual reasons.”

They’re waiting for Sherlock; they’re always waiting for Sherlock, to rise up from the depths or descend from the heights or however it is that he moves.  

“And what’re those?” John’s leaning on the table, the edge just creasing the sleeve of a slack uni-era jumper, a lab coat thrown over for old times’ sake.  

“You know them,” Molly says, “but it’s not just ‘help people’ or ‘be looked up to’ for you.”  Her smile only demands half of her mouth; a little sad, Molly, a little elegy under the sweet-rose lipstick and the science.

“You were wanting,"Molly says, a bit bravely, “the one patient you’ll never be able to cure. Or release. That you can keep working on. And you know, be worked on by. You couldn’t be anything else.”

“Oh,” says John. And he doesn’t say anything else because Sherlock flings open the door and bursts from the undergrowth (an entire flock of strangely subterranean crows) calling, “Molly! A bone chisel!”  

Sherlock at ten, poison ivy and the blistering hatred of his classmates.

Sherlock at twenty, cascading down off cocaine, scraping the watch beetles from under the thin skin of his forearms.

Sherlock at twenty-five, pneumonia in the right lung and enough misanthropy to fell the Empire.

Sherlock at thirty, pushing pins into a map of London, counting crimes, solving starved until he wakes up on the floor with a dry mouth and no past.

Future Sherlock. Sherlock now.

“John?” he says.

John thinks first do no harm, no harm.

 


End file.
